Future facing

What started as a holiday home for Mike and Sue Nicholls turned into a high-tech, energy-efficient new build with stunning sea views

- Rebecca Foster

A self-build wasn’t on Mike and Sue Nicholls’ agenda when they purchased a 1960s house on Chichester Harbour seafront in 2014. The couple, both watersports enthusiasts, initially used the property as a place to retreat to at weekends, travelling down from their permanent base in Kent, for weekends spent sailing and windsurfing.

In 2017, when Mike started to think about retirement, the pair decided to move to the south coast permanently. “We’d always wanted to live near the water, but we didn’t buy the house with the aim of knocking it down,” says Mike. “Our initial idea was to refurbish it.” After a false start with their first architect, Mike and Sue appointed local practice Helyer Davies Architects to take the project forward. “Our first architect was too slow and we knew things were unlikely to improve as the build progressed,” says Mike.

CHANGE OF PLAN

Tom Davies, a director at Helyer Davies, put forward an interesting proposal for the scheme. “The roof was sagging, the electrics were poor and the kitchen was tiny,” says Mike. “Tom told us we’d need to take the back of the property off and replace the roof. He suggested that we start again from scratch, enabling us to build to modern standards of thermal efficiency.”